Search This Blog

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Codecs, Metadata, and Addressing: Video on the Web Workshop Report

W3C announced that a published Report on the W3C Video on the Web
Workshop is now available. Thirty-seven organizations discussed video
and audio codecs, spatial and temporal addressing, metadata, digital
rights management, accessibility, and other topics related to ensuring
the success of video as a "first class citizen" of the Web. W3C thanks
Cisco for hosting the Workshop, which took place 12-13 December 2007
simultaneously in San Jose, California and Brussels, Belgium. Five
major areas of possible work emerged from the Workshop: video codecs,
metadata, addressing, cross-group coordination and best practices for
video content. The W3C team will work with interested parties to
evaluate the situation with regards to video codecs, and what, if
anything, W3C can do to ensure that codecs, containers, etc. for the
Web encourage the broadest possible adoption and interoperability. As
for metadata, one direction would be to create a Working Group tasked
to come up with a simple common ontology between the existing standards
which defines a mapping between this ontology and existing standards
and defines a roadmap for extending the ontology, including information
related to copyright and licensing rights. W3C should also consider
creating a Group to investigate the important issue of addressing. The
goal would be to: (1) provide a URI syntax for temporal and spatial
addressing; (2) investigate how to attach metadata information to
spatial and temporal regions when using RDF or other existing
specifications, such as SMIL or SVG. A Group working on guidelines and
best practices for effective video and audio content on the Web could
be useful, and would look at the entire existing delivery chain from
producers to end-users, from content delivery, to metadata management,
accessibility or device independence. Also available online: forty-two
position papers and Workshop minutes.

No comments: